Day of African Child.

When we talk about the Day of the African Child, it is in remembrance of those children who were massacred in 1960 in South Africa while advocating their right to better education and living conditions.

But in the Ugandan context, there are African children whom we need to pay attention to—children living on the streets and other destitute ones.An alarming number of young children in Uganda are surviving on Kampala’s cruel streets; foraging for scraps of food, begging, stealing or doing the most menial of jobs.

The children on the streets are there for a reason. Society seems to see them as mere dirt, a societal menace! But they are a looming problem if not addressed by the Government and civil society organizations. A child on the street is the true African child who must attract our attention!

So as we celebrate the Day of the African Child today, with its theme focusing on children living on the streets, it is prudent that we look at the conditions under which these children live; what kind of family backgrounds they come from and therefore the factors that could have contributed to their situation.

Only then shall we be able to address their plight. Ugandans, let us think and act even as we celebrate the Day of African Child.